Reply to Anyone else lose their groove during Covid with young kids and still not have it back?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As a mom of older kids, I'm confused why everyone things the pandemic told them something new. Yes the pandemic sucked but we weren't supported before the pandemic either. [/quote]

Yeah but the pandemic shook up the delicate balance we had to manage. My kids’ preschool closed for a while and then drastically cut hours to put kids in cohorts when they reopened. Then instead of the usual burning through PTO for routine illnesses, we were all hemorrhaging leave for 10 day quarantines often while our kids were perfectly healthy. Or if we were “lucky” told we could catch up on work at night, which isn’t really sustainable. The icing on the cake was the total shutdown of places like playgrounds so we were truly stuck at home going crazy, no play dates, no mom group meetups, etc.

So not only did we not have support, but we also had societal factors coming together to make things even harder. [/quote]

Some of you act like you were uniquely affected by the pandemic. Talk to families with teens and high school teachers…rampant mental health issues amongst that age group. High school and college years derailed.
Or talk to nursing home personnel (I volunteer at one)….the isolation and feelings of abandonment for many elderly, including people approaching death with no access to loved ones was horrible. I get that many of you are not in a good place, but so are other people. Please stop acting as if you were uniquely victimized by the pandemic. Some of you have no fricken clue.[/quote]

Please stop telling people how to feel, or rather how they’re allowed to feel, based on the fact that others may have had it worse. (And you truly have no idea the extent to what ANY posters have gone through.) Please try to have a little empathy.

I think that’s what saddens me the most about covid.  What a missed opportunity for self-reflection and the development of a more [b]functional, loving, supportive society.  [/b]Instead, hypercapitalism has run amok and nobody knows how to function “normally” anymore, because it seems there’s no baseline anymore.  It’s awful.[/quote]

What does this actually mean and look like IRL for your average working parent?   Free daycares?  Relatives babysitting your kids?  Long maternity leaves?

I don’t quite get the “support” everyone is saying that they need.  Raising kids is hard work and I don’t see how support can make it all that easier.  Maternity leave has to eventually end and even a free daycare has its many challenges.

If you want an easier life, be a SAHM but that comes with its own set of challenges.

[/quote]

Did you really just say that you don't understand why people want "support" or how it would make anything easier? WTF?[/quote]

Yes, I did and I notice you didn’t respond to my specific question.

What does this support look like?  My assumption is you want others to provide you with *free labor.*. By others I mean mostly women.  You want the government to provide you childcare, grandparents to babysit, neighbors to pitch in, other employees to pick up your slack at work, etc.

[/quote]

It looks like school closures/virtual school strained the fabric of our society past the breaking point.

It was a huge political failure and it should have been avoided at all costs. [/quote]

I posted above but my kid’s preschool opened back up in the fall of 2020. A lot of daycares opened before that. Our public school remained virtual for another 6 months but most/all privates were open. I know a lot of working parents sent their kids to Catholic or private so kids could go to school in person.[/quote]

Yes, that is from March 2020 to Feb 2021- ish, for many, many people.  Some of them losing jobs or running themselves ragged working 2 jobs - teacher/childcare for early elementary age kids plus their day job for 6 months to a year, all in an environment of fear, uncertainty and recrimination.  It broke us.[/quote]

Every single family I know who truly sought in person childcare, found it. [/quote]

(1) When did they find it? How long did they go without?

(2) What does "truly sought in person childcare" mean? Do you think there are people who wanted/needed in person care but simply didn't try hard enough? Do you think it's possible they had restrictions you don't understand, like a limited budget?

(3) How many of the people you know are middle or working class? If everyone you know has an average HHI of 300k, then I believe you but also think it's irrelevant to this conversation, because that's double our HHI. There are lots of problems you can solve by throwing money at them, and people in the top 1-5% of all earners generally have money to throw at problems. But the remaining 95% of the population does not, which is why you see a lot of people not his thread talking about the challenges of childcare during the pandemic. They aren't lying, they are simply more resource constrained than you and the people you know.[/quote]

1. - Definitely by the start of the Fall 2020 school year, and many were enrolled in outdoor camps that summer prior. And a ton of people I know sent their kids to places that were previously aftercare (TKD, Dance, Gyms, etc.) for a supervised virtual school day.
2. - Yes most people I know make at least 200k combined. Interestingly, it was the people in the lower end of this income bracket that were more likely to have in person care because they themselves had to work in person (Intelligence, teaching, nursing, hotel management, etc.) The wealthier $300k+ folks were less likely to have childcare because their jobs were more able to be WFH/Time shifted.[/quote]

So you mostly know wealthy and UMC folks and, amazingly, they didn't struggle as much to find childcare during the pandemic as people with less money.

I'm shocked.[/quote]

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